this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
18 points (100.0% liked)

Programming

17423 readers
55 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev



founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Hey guys, I have never programmed in my life, but I now want to make an app for rpgs.

The main idea is to make a dice roller, inside a character sheet storage.. It's just supposed to help me store and edit my stats and let me roll and and add stuff.

Best case scenario would be using Termux for this, since it's supposed to run on older smartphones.

I'd love some guidance where to start!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] sashanoraa@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago (9 children)

So making an app when you've never programmed before is a big undertaking, but not impossible. You mentioned termux, so are you looking to make a command line app? That would be the easiest place to start. A simple cli dice roller is a great beginner project.

Beyond that, how do you envision the character sheet part working?

[–] Nerorero@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago (8 children)

It's just supposed to show the status of my character. I want to enter short commands for different stats. Ie asking for health = it shows my hitpoints and wounds I received. Asking for skills = it shows how much I have to add to my skill checks. And of course dice rolling, with adding numbers. Those don't even have to be direct stat rolls, like "roll dex", but just "roll 1d10+4".

That's it. I will use an old phone for this, mounted to my arm as a cyberdeck, and want to make it visually like 80s hacking. Basically with the visuals of coding.

[–] samus7070@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I used to work for a ttrpg company. A dice parser is not a small undertaking. You’re basically writing a calculator with an embedded random number generator. It’s fun but not an easy first project. My advice would be to keep it simple to start with and have your command interface (repl) just accept simple roll commands like roll dex and that handler knows how to make a dex roll. Simple roll commands like roll d6 are also easy to parse out with just a regex. Honestly, I think you would be better off writing a gui app and give it a retro hacker look than going with some type of terminal. Typing on phones is a pain vs tapping buttons.

[–] Nerorero@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the advice! I am not a big fan of carrying my heavy laptop around, but are probably right about writing on a smartphone

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)